You might become a fine president. But you and your state, California, would be better off if you ran for Santa Barbara County supervisor.

That’s no joke. If you want to tackle some of our nation’s greatest problems, there’s no need to trudge through the D.C. swamps. You can stay right at home in your Montecito mansion.

A local government position in a small place 90 miles north of Los Angeles might sound like a comedown for a billionaire. It isn’t.

For all its wealth and natural beauty, your county of 445,000 is now the most challenged place in California. That was true even before two recent disasters — the massive Thomas Fire that forced you to evacuate and the subsequent mudslides that killed 20 people — spurred soul-searching about emergency response, infrastructure and development in the county.

I realize that being a local politician was the furthest thing from your mind in 2001 when you bought a 42-acre spread there and named it “The Promised Land,” a nod to Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” in 1968. No, you loved the idea of Santa Barbara as a magical quasi-island on the land — a place cut off from the world by the sea and the mountains but still close enough to take a lunch meeting in Hollywood.

But that geographic isolation makes Santa Barbara’s problems more complex and costlier. Consider the area’s chronic water troubles. Santa Barbara remains in drought even after last winter’s rains. Why? The landscape that makes Santa Barbara so dramatically beautiful — high mountains next to the ocean — also makes it hard to capture water.

When rain lands, it rushes out to sea rather than being captured by reservoirs or seeping into the aquifer. Rising ocean levels also threaten incursions into the region’s freshwater supply. Santa Barbara has responded by buying more water and installing a desalination plant. (This is why your laid-back neighbor The Dude, Jeff Bridges, was reportedly angry when he learned you had dug a new well on your property.)

Santa Barbara also lacks strong infrastructure to connect it to the rest of the state (Highway 101 is a parking lot, the Amtrak train is slow and the airport has been losing flights). And county government is hamstrung by persistent budget shortfalls. (It could use your Midas touch.)

This reflects the area’s badly imbalanced economy. Santa Barbara, which mixes wealthy transplants and low-wage workers in agriculture and tourism, has the second worst income inequality in California after the Bay Area. And by advanced statistics, accounting for Santa Barbara’s high housing costs, it has the highest childhood poverty rate in California.

Santa Barbara poverty looks different than the poverty you grew up with in Milwaukee. But it’s still damaging.

Drive up to Santa Maria, the county’s most populous city. You’ll see pretty parks and single-family homes. But when you knock on doors, you’ll discover two and three families packed into many homes. You’ll also hear concern about rising crime and find children whose lives are too chaotic to enjoy their beautiful region.

While you’re there, make some young friends and drive west on Main Street until you reach the Rancho Guadalupe Dunes Preserve, a county park on the ocean. You’ll find that some Santa Maria kids haven’t experienced the 550-foot dunes, the tallest on the West Coast, even though they live nearby.

That’s the kind of thing you could do as a county supervisor that you couldn’t do as president.

Yes, the White House offers awesome power. But you’d also find yourself constrained by partisan polarization. As a county supervisor, you could get more done, because supervisors are both the legislative and executive branches of government.

Then there’s the power of your example. By becoming a supervisor, you’d inspire Americans to stop obsessing about our insane national politics and instead get involved in their own local governments.

You’ve been successful because of your ability to bridge the aspirations of the wealthy and the poor. Santa Barbara County needs more bridges like that. Is there any higher public service than to save the place you call home?